The first three Dune books are all a buildup to God Emperor of Dune which is completely off the wall and great as hell. I haven't read it in 10 years so I think I'm going to do that again. After the third book all the sequels take place thousands of years after the last, it gets pretty awesome and weird, the last three books of Dune are better than the first but you half to read the first to understand them obviously. I really like the first Dune book but the characters act so goddamn over dramatic, mostly SHOCKED(!) about every fucking thing going on around them, I think Herbert got better at handling characters as the series went on.

The last C. Clarke book I read was Rendezvous With Rama where astronauts find a massive cynlinder floating in space, break into it to find a dead alien city with a population of worker robots that activates, the astronauts think it is weird then leave. I can't recall a single damn character or anything happening in the book at all besides descriptions of a robot city, pretty awesome but felt sort of like a waste of time.

The first three Dune books are all a buildup to God Emperor of Dune which is completely off the wall and great as hell. I haven't read it in 10 years so I think I'm going to do that again. After the third book all the sequels take place thousands of years after the last, it gets pretty awesome and weird, the last three books of Dune are better than the first but you half to read the first to understand them obviously. I really like the first Dune book but the characters act so goddamn over dramatic, mostly SHOCKED(!) about every fucking thing going on around them, I think Herbert got better at handling characters as the series went on.

Reading the wiki, that book looks fucking insane.

_________________and we are bornfrom the same womband hewn fromthe same stone - Primordial, "Heathen Tribes"

"Once when I was a prisoner of Vodalus, I was bitten by a blood bat. There was very little pain, but a sensation of lassitude that grew more seductive every moment. When I moved my foot and startled the bat from its feast, the wind of its dark wings had seemed the very exhalation of Death. That was but the shadow, the foretaste, of what I felt then in the gangway. I was the core of the universe, as we always are to ourselves; and the universe tore like a client's rotten rags and fell in soft gray dust to nothing." - Urth of the New Sun

_________________and we are bornfrom the same womband hewn fromthe same stone - Primordial, "Heathen Tribes"

"Once when I was a prisoner of Vodalus, I was bitten by a blood bat. There was very little pain, but a sensation of lassitude that grew more seductive every moment. When I moved my foot and startled the bat from its feast, the wind of its dark wings had seemed the very exhalation of Death. That was but the shadow, the foretaste, of what I felt then in the gangway. I was the core of the universe, as we always are to ourselves; and the universe tore like a client's rotten rags and fell in soft gray dust to nothing." - Urth of the New Sun

Urth of the New Sun is wild. The gigantic fucking spaceship piloted by a demigod is an awesome setting, too, and that's saying something considering how great the setting in the first four books was.

_________________

MorbidBlood wrote:

So the winner is Destruction and Infernal Overkill is the motherfucking skullcrushing poserkilling satan-worshiping 666 FUCK YOU greatest german thrash record.

The first three Dune books are all a buildup to God Emperor of Dune which is completely off the wall and great as hell. I haven't read it in 10 years so I think I'm going to do that again. After the third book all the sequels take place thousands of years after the last, it gets pretty awesome and weird, the last three books of Dune are better than the first but you half to read the first to understand them obviously. I really like the first Dune book but the characters act so goddamn over dramatic, mostly SHOCKED(!) about every fucking thing going on around them, I think Herbert got better at handling characters as the series went on.

Reading the wiki, that book looks fucking insane.

Indeed. I almost want to slug the way through Children of Dune (I've only read the first two, decided to call it quits after because everyone seems to agree it goes downhill from there) just to get to the apparent mindfuck of God Emperor of Dune...

..

I myself just read The Stranger by Camus for the first time, which was a quite easy read and strangely more unsettling looking back at it and digesting it than actually reading it. Next up is Occurance in the Immediate Unreality by Blecher or The Fall, also by Camus. I want to reread Sutree by McCarthy soon, too.

Oh, and I also bought (and read) five FUKITOR magazines, which are awesome. Porn-gore-exxxploitation-violence hand drawn comix. http://fukitor.blogspot.com. I think they'll have a lot of "reread value" (mainly looking at the awesome illustrations). Also got an artbook with Beksinski that I've looked through a couple times, good stuff.

I'm glad to see there's a thread about literature,I love literature and,in fact,in these last years I've spend much more time on it than in any other hobby that you can practice at home. These are some of my favourite novels:-Gabriel García Marquez-Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)-Vladimir Nabokov-Lolita-Fyodor Dostoyevsky-Crime and Punishment-Benito Perez Galdós-Marianela-George Orwell-1984-The short stories by Franz Kafka

I don't know if you'll know the spanish/latin american writers I've mentioned,they're very famous among spanish speakers but I don't know if they're famous in the rest of the world,I guess that García Marquez is (he's got a nobel prize),but I don't know if Perez Galdós is internationally famous.

Right now I don't have much time to read, so I'm not reading any novel, I'm just reading a short story or two by Allan Poe or by Borges every now and then.

There are so many historical fiction books European based but was wondering if anyone new of any Asian/Japanese or Chinese historical fiction books, particularly the samurai era ?

I enjoyed Yoshikawa's Taiko long ago but then again I was completely obsessed with Asia that semester (well to tell the truth it was an Asian girl but whatever). I remember it being a fairly action packed sprawling samurai epic. Got me interested in the Sengoku period. I've heard good things about his other well known novel Musashi as well.

So, speaking of Gene Wolfe again, I just finished "Soldier of the mist" and "The Devil in a forest". The latter was pretty average IMO, none of the awesome prose or weirdness that made the Sun books so awesome. "Soldier of the mist", on the other hand, was killer. Particularly if you know your Classics/Greek Mythology.

_________________[quote="Mike_Tyson"]

"I think the average person thinks I'm a fucking nut and I deserve whatever happens to me."

There is a novel based on Mushashi's life, I don't think he meant the book written be the actual Musashi

That book seems quite hard to find in my little country unless i want to pay 40 bux. There are plenty of the "The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi" books around which would be very factual, but the book Musashi sounds like a much more thrilling read.

So, speaking of Gene Wolfe again, I just finished "Soldier of the mist" and "The Devil in a forest". The latter was pretty average IMO, none of the awesome prose or weirdness that made the Sun books so awesome. "Soldier of the mist", on the other hand, was killer. Particularly if you know your Classics/Greek Mythology.

I haven't read The Devil in a Forest, but I hardly ever see it mentioned, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were weaker. The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Peace from his early era are much better.

Soldier of the Mist on the other hand is definitely excellent; I hope you have the next two? The series isn't over yet, but there's still time for Wolfe to finish it, especially considering the fourth book will probably be the last, given his predilection for tetralogies. Latro is such a great character; his memory forces him to re-evaluate his companions every day, sometimes arriving at very different conclusions. It's a neat way to force the reader to consider the nature of character judgments - Latro is obviously an extreme case, but unless we see a person every day, how accurate can our judgment of their character be? How much is it affected by chance - maybe you met them in an uncommonly good or bad mood, maybe they gave in to some weird impulse that day, maybe you caught them in a vulnerable moment - and how might that imperfect character judgment lead to further judgments based on faulty information? Trust might be given or withheld undeservedly, or kinship, or generosity, or a million other things.

Of course Latro's memory issues affect many other things. It's just a fascinating setup, and Wolfe of course explores every nook and cranny of it he can.

_________________

MorbidBlood wrote:

So the winner is Destruction and Infernal Overkill is the motherfucking skullcrushing poserkilling satan-worshiping 666 FUCK YOU greatest german thrash record.

Recently I finished reading Fevre Dream by George RR Martin, La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri and The importance of being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I started Dune yesterday and I think it has a weird feel, I really hope the characters get more interesting on ahead.I'm planning on reading "The name of the wind" or "Gadsby" or "Wild Cards", all of them seem interesting.

So I just finished my first Gene Wolfe book, The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It started a bit slow but was really pretty fucking cool. Really neat world-building and it was fascinating how he tied it all together so well despite jumping across a bunch of different presentation styles throughout the three novellas. I know it's meant to be subtle and that some questions aren't really meant to be answered, but certain details leave me curious as hell:

1) It's sort of implied that the Shadow Children are actually human beings descended from some ancient spacefaring race. However, their physiology seems to have changed quite a bit from standard human in order to survive the harsh environment on St. Anne. Plus, it seems like they've also got some new evolutionary traits, like the sort of hive-mind creation of the Old Wise One and the ability to use their minds to conceal the planetary system from spacefaring human explorers through some means. If indeed the Shadow Children are human, how have they changed so much in such a relatively short period of time?

2) The Annese are all named either John or Mary, and it's implied that they copied their physical appearances from the original humans who landed there. If the aborigines also appropriated the names John and Mary, these can't have been Atlanteans or proto-neolithic humans or anything else that's suggested in the book; the names came from some more recent human society.

I suppose it's possible that the whole thing is supposed to be set so damn far into the future that 21st century-ish space exploration to alien worlds could already be ancient. Or, more likely, those are just unimportant details. I can't help but be curious, though, especially since the Shadow Children don't really get mentioned beyond the middle part of the book.

Just read Bernard Cornwell's 'Stonehenge'. Very good book, amazing story that "who knows" could have been close to the truth.Am also so reading "Maori healing and herbal".It's amazing how different ancient cultures who never even knew of each other all abide there lives by the same sorts of things, gods nature spirits and rituals.

I suppose it's possible that the whole thing is supposed to be set so damn far into the future that 21st century-ish space exploration to alien worlds could already be ancient. Or, more likely, those are just unimportant details. I can't help but be curious, though, especially since the Shadow Children don't really get mentioned beyond the middle part of the book.

Just FYI, Gene Wolfe's other science-fiction books are unequivocally set super, super far into the future. His best-known one, The Book of the New Sun, is as you might have guessed, about Earth needing a new sun because the old one is dying. As for the Shadow Children, when I read the book I just assumed they were aliens, but it's definitely possible they're hyper-evolved humans too. Gene Wolfe is nothing if not ambiguous (though never just for its own sake).

_________________

MorbidBlood wrote:

So the winner is Destruction and Infernal Overkill is the motherfucking skullcrushing poserkilling satan-worshiping 666 FUCK YOU greatest german thrash record.

Hmm, in that case I'm more convinced that the Shadow Children are hyper-evolved humans. The book *does* touch on what evolution might be like far into the future in other ways. For example, he brings up Dollo's law of evolutionary irreversibility, which applied to the Annese could be related to their inability to use tools. They're clearly intelligent, but not being able to really use tools effectively seems like a pretty huge disadvantage. However, since they can effectively mimic more advanced species, all they have to do is mimic humans in a post-tool age (like John Marsch) where their shitty motor skills basically result in nothing more annoying than bad penmanship. Because their motor skills are effectively vestigial, even over long periods of time they wouldn't "eventually" develop them anyway per Dollo's law if their shapeshifting allows them to effectively bypass that part of regular humanoid evolution.

I think the first novella was also a commentary on evolution; with rampant cloning and genetic engineering going on, maybe the humans of a billion years in the future are basically just hyper-idealized versions of present-day humans. However, the humans (Shadow Children) who've been on St. Anne this whole time, without access to that kind of tech, would instead evolve normally, both advancing (i.e. their psychic powers) and returning to a more primitive state that let them live as a tribal society that eats people and doesn't even have fire.

Hmm, in that case I'm more convinced that the Shadow Children are hyper-evolved humans. The book *does* touch on what evolution might be like far into the future in other ways. For example, he brings up Dollo's law of evolutionary irreversibility, which applied to the Annese could be related to their inability to use tools. They're clearly intelligent, but not being able to really use tools effectively seems like a pretty huge disadvantage. However, since they can effectively mimic more advanced species, all they have to do is mimic humans in a post-tool age (like John Marsch) where their shitty motor skills basically result in nothing more annoying than bad penmanship. Because their motor skills are effectively vestigial, even over long periods of time they wouldn't "eventually" develop them anyway per Dollo's law if their shapeshifting allows them to effectively bypass that part of regular humanoid evolution.

I think the first novella was also a commentary on evolution; with rampant cloning and genetic engineering going on, maybe the humans of a billion years in the future are basically just hyper-idealized versions of present-day humans. However, the humans (Shadow Children) who've been on St. Anne this whole time, without access to that kind of tech, would instead evolve normally, both advancing (i.e. their psychic powers) and returning to a more primitive state that let them live as a tribal society that eats people and doesn't even have fire.

Fair points about the tools use, I read the book about 6 years ago and am a tad hazy on the details. Since you clearly enjoyed it and (I assume) want to read more Gene Wolfe, you can go a couple of different ways. You can either dive right into his Book of the New Sun series, 4 main books with 1 extra to wrap it up. Great stuff set on far-future Earth, with a setting heavily influenced by Vance's Dying Earth, but told in a totally different way. It's really dense and hard to figure out what's going on sometimes, especially since Severian is a notoriously unreliable narrator, but it's also top-notch stuff. If you'd rather just stick to single books, Peace is widely regarded as Wolfe's best standalone, a sort of mashup of mainstream fiction with horror and fantasy elements. Really complex but also rewarding. For heroic fantasy, the Wizard Knight duet is Gene Wolfe's take on deliberate fantasy cliches, but rather than simply aping the cliches or "subverting" them, he simply reinvents them entirely, keeping their essence and meaning intact (dragons are still violent and greedy, elves are still ethereal, beautiful, and aloof), but utterly changing the way they're presented and operate to the point that you can't predict what's going to happen at all. It also goes into great detail about the morality and ethos of knightly chivalry and honor, how being a knight was (ideally) about much more than just owning armor and a horse and a sword and knowing how to use them.

Really you should read all of the above, and more, but unfortunately you can't just read them all at the same time!

_________________

MorbidBlood wrote:

So the winner is Destruction and Infernal Overkill is the motherfucking skullcrushing poserkilling satan-worshiping 666 FUCK YOU greatest german thrash record.

Well, the library's got a whole shitload of Gene Wolfe stuff, so I'm sure I'll work my way through it all in time. Unfortunately their Jack Vance collection is extremely skimpy. They've only got Demon Princes and a couple of his most recent stand-alone books and that's it. I'll probably have to pick those up on Abe Books or something.

I've finished reading "Notes from the Underground" by Dostoyevski and this time I wanted to read something completely different,so I decided to get started in science fiction,a genre that I hadn't try yet(excepting Dystopian novels such as 1984 and A Brave New World).It was a hard decision,because most of the classic novels of the genre are part of a saga,and I don't want to start a saga in this moment,but I finally chose Athur C. Clarke's "2001:A sapce Odyssey" (though I've got no intention of reading the sequels for the moment).The novel is entertaining and the story is original and interesting,but the copy I've bought is awfully translated,so I've download a pdf with the original version and I read again in english almost every paragraph,which it makes it a little heavy.Nevertheless,I think I could enjoy this book (and the whole genre of sci-fi itself) much more if my knowledge about some scientific disciplines such as physics,biology or the ones realted to technology/engineering was bigger.

Clarke writes relatively "hard" science fiction meaning it tries to stay within the boundaries of science and doesn't get into a lot of "fantastical" stuff. For "softer" stuff you might want to try Dune, Ender's Game, The Left Hand of Darkness, Hyperion...more focus on characters than Clarke's stuff, at least from what I've read.

_________________and we are bornfrom the same womband hewn fromthe same stone - Primordial, "Heathen Tribes"

I'm glad to see there's a thread about literature,I love literature and,in fact,in these last years I've spend much more time on it than in any other hobby that you can practice at home. These are some of my favourite novels:-Gabriel García Marquez-Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)-Vladimir Nabokov-Lolita-Fyodor Dostoyevsky-Crime and Punishment-Benito Perez Galdós-Marianela-George Orwell-1984-The short stories by Franz Kafka

I don't know if you'll know the spanish/latin american writers I've mentioned,they're very famous among spanish speakers but I don't know if they're famous in the rest of the world,I guess that García Marquez is (he's got a nobel prize),but I don't know if Perez Galdós is internationally famous.

Right now I don't have much time to read, so I'm not reading any novel, I'm just reading a short story or two by Allan Poe or by Borges every now and then.

Have you read Tolstoy? I am certain that you would love Anna Karenina.

Clarke writes relatively "hard" science fiction meaning it tries to stay within the boundaries of science and doesn't get into a lot of "fantastical" stuff. For "softer" stuff you might want to try Dune, Ender's Game, The Left Hand of Darkness, Hyperion...more focus on characters than Clarke's stuff, at least from what I've read.

In fact I don't dislike all those technical descriptions,but when I read them I feel sorry that I don't have the knowledge that I need to understand them totally and to know how the author has imagine that the facts he's telling could be possible in the future basing his suppositions in the cientific knowledge of his time,because I know that if I had that knowledge I would find it very interesting.

But the bright side of this is that it made me want to learn more about science so maybe I'll start reading some of those "Popular science" books.This is something really good,because though I've always been interested in social sciences such as philosophy,history or psicology I've never been interested in "hard sciences".

KatyShouldKnowBetter wrote:

Dr_Prozac wrote:

I'm glad to see there's a thread about literature,I love literature and,in fact,in these last years I've spend much more time on it than in any other hobby that you can practice at home. These are some of my favourite novels:-Gabriel García Marquez-Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)-Vladimir Nabokov-Lolita-Fyodor Dostoyevsky-Crime and Punishment-Benito Perez Galdós-Marianela-George Orwell-1984-The short stories by Franz Kafka

I don't know if you'll know the spanish/latin american writers I've mentioned,they're very famous among spanish speakers but I don't know if they're famous in the rest of the world,I guess that García Marquez is (he's got a nobel prize),but I don't know if Perez Galdós is internationally famous.

Right now I don't have much time to read, so I'm not reading any novel, I'm just reading a short story or two by Allan Poe or by Borges every now and then.

Have you read Tolstoy? I am certain that you would love Anna Karenina.

I've read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" this summer and I've like it so much and I have "Hadji Murat" at home,so I may read it one of these days.I'm interested in Ana Karenina more than in any other novel by Tolstoi but I don't want to read something as long as that for the moment,though I MUST read it some day.

Just finished the first book of Vance's Demon Princes a little while ago. It was pretty sweet, though the ending was a little anti-climactic since I was sort of expecting some bigger twist or something really heinous and cunning that would thwart Gersen's plans. It has really enticed me to keep reading to see what future Demon Princes are like, though, and what kind of stuff Gersen will have to pull off in order to get to them.

Like homosexuality in high school, it definitely Gets Better Later, batman. I was even less impressed with the first book than you but by the fourth I was about to promise my firstborn's blood to the Vance estate. It really becomes almost dangerously addictive, especially if you've got time-sensitive obligations to fulfill.

I still need to venture into the other Vance books recommended by FSM.

I just recently finished Big Planet. If I've got my timeline straight I think this may actually be his first "Earthman marooned on a strange planet" novel? You can feel heavy shades of what would later be the Planet of Adventure series. It's almost like watching a really creative child in a sandbox, imagination just running wild.

The simple genius of the "Kirstendale" culture he created was so quaint and so obvious that I'm genuinely surprised it hasn't happened in the real world yet!

Just started on Marune: Alastor 933 sunday night and I'm already more than half way through it. As with everything I've read by him the pages just melt away. He's so good at a revenge plot/mystery.

Vance and Wolfe are the recurring themes in this thread, with Lovecraft popping up from time to time, and arguments about Dune, and the occasional 'I just started reading Fellowship Of The Ring' rearing its head. You should know this by now, Jonpo, it's what this thread is all about.

I just started reading Abercrombie's The Blade Itself, it's a pleasant read so far, but then, anything with torture in it is for me as there are many people I know/have known that damned well deserve to have their digits hacked off and stuck up their orifices. He is a pom but writes in an American style, which is weird, as some American fantasy writers seem to write in a pom style, if that makes any sense, and it probably doesn't, because it shouldn't, so it won't.

_________________I am a Chinese lady with a pair of big water eyes under the long eyelashes.I don't know how beautiful i am , but people usually say that I needn't do face-painting.

Hey Jonpo, have you read the Moon Moth? It's only a short story, but I think that features possibly my favorite Vancian culture (with the Darsh of Dar Sai being a strong competitor). The way the ornate masks and ridiculous instruments are described is just perfect, as are the outsider protagonist's often laughable attempts to successfully navigate the complex etiquette. Really the simple plot is essentially background to the hilarious worldbuilding and comedic scenes.

_________________

MorbidBlood wrote:

So the winner is Destruction and Infernal Overkill is the motherfucking skullcrushing poserkilling satan-worshiping 666 FUCK YOU greatest german thrash record.